|
Read More This PBS biography series, American Masters, is on its 26th season (hint: it beats The Simpsons) and to start things off will be its look at folk & protest singer/songwriter Phil Ochs and jazz legend Cab Calloway.....
|
AMERICAN MASTERS
pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters
PBS is airing a brand new two-hour documentary "American Masters Inventing David Geffen" on Tuesday, November 20th at 8pm (ET) on PBS.
If you're a music lover, you probably love Geffen Records. They have released some of my favorite albums: Siouxsie and the Banshees' Once Upon a Time: The Singles, XTC's Skylarking ("Dear God"), Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, The Sundays' Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic ("Here's Where the Story Ends"), Nirvana's Nevermind and Incesticide, Weezer's Weezer (the blue album) and Pinkerton, Beck's Odelay, and my favorite Welsh punkers 60ft. Dolls' The Big 3.
I got to preview the documentary and I have to say it was overall enjoyable. How lucky was executive producer Susan Lacy? She got incredible access to David Geffen and his various friends, colleagues and clients on the documentary! Interviews included face time with Cher, Jackson Browne, Tom Hanks, David Crosby, Don Henley, Arianna Huffington, Elton John, Calvin Klein, Steve Martin, Yoko Ono, Frank Rich, Steven Spielberg, Jann Wenner, etc. Everyone had nice stories to tell. My favorite was Jackson Browne, who told us that Geffen went up to bat for him when he was relatively unknown.
I was only interested in the music part, which accounted for the majority of the documentary. Thankfully, his early start at the William Morris Agency mailroom (how he intercepted a letter from a school and replaced it with a letter indicating that he attended the college) or his sexual relationships or his work with Geffen Films (in the latter part of the documentary) were kept to a minimum. The documentary got it right in focusing on Geffen and his love for music.
The documentary also pointed what made Geffen unique was that he generally loves the artists he worked with. He didn't treat them as simply clients, but as friends. They also reinvented the way Rock n Roll contracts were written, giving artists more control and money. It wasn't all roses, for instance, they spotlight his lawsuit with Neil Young, because he wasn't producing a "commercial" record. In the end, Geffen did the right thing and dropped the lawsuit, but it was already too late because Young never recorded an album for Geffen after that.
The highlight for Geffen was his relationship with Cher and how he finally landed Bob Dylan. Dylan was Geffen's Mt Everest and he was so happy to release a live album. All the promotion and booking were done for free because Geffen believed so much in Dylan. The other highlight was about how Geffen knew Guns N' Roses was on the verge of exploding.
Surprisingly the documentary is very up-to-date with Barack Obama near the end of the documentary. I didn't really think this was really necessary to telling David Geffen's story. If anything, I would've liked to have seen more of Geffen's misses (Nelsons, anyone?), along with his hits.
I learned quite a lot about David Geffen, and if you love his records and want to know more about how he got there, check out "American Masters Inventing David Geffen" next Tuesday, November 20th on PBS.
pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters
PBS is airing a brand new two-hour documentary "American Masters Inventing David Geffen" on Tuesday, November 20th at 8pm (ET) on PBS.
If you're a music lover, you probably love Geffen Records. They have released some of my favorite albums: Siouxsie and the Banshees' Once Upon a Time: The Singles, XTC's Skylarking ("Dear God"), Guns N' Roses' Appetite for Destruction, The Sundays' Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic ("Here's Where the Story Ends"), Nirvana's Nevermind and Incesticide, Weezer's Weezer (the blue album) and Pinkerton, Beck's Odelay, and my favorite Welsh punkers 60ft. Dolls' The Big 3.
I got to preview the documentary and I have to say it was overall enjoyable. How lucky was executive producer Susan Lacy? She got incredible access to David Geffen and his various friends, colleagues and clients on the documentary! Interviews included face time with Cher, Jackson Browne, Tom Hanks, David Crosby, Don Henley, Arianna Huffington, Elton John, Calvin Klein, Steve Martin, Yoko Ono, Frank Rich, Steven Spielberg, Jann Wenner, etc. Everyone had nice stories to tell. My favorite was Jackson Browne, who told us that Geffen went up to bat for him when he was relatively unknown.
I was only interested in the music part, which accounted for the majority of the documentary. Thankfully, his early start at the William Morris Agency mailroom (how he intercepted a letter from a school and replaced it with a letter indicating that he attended the college) or his sexual relationships or his work with Geffen Films (in the latter part of the documentary) were kept to a minimum. The documentary got it right in focusing on Geffen and his love for music.
The documentary also pointed what made Geffen unique was that he generally loves the artists he worked with. He didn't treat them as simply clients, but as friends. They also reinvented the way Rock n Roll contracts were written, giving artists more control and money. It wasn't all roses, for instance, they spotlight his lawsuit with Neil Young, because he wasn't producing a "commercial" record. In the end, Geffen did the right thing and dropped the lawsuit, but it was already too late because Young never recorded an album for Geffen after that.
The highlight for Geffen was his relationship with Cher and how he finally landed Bob Dylan. Dylan was Geffen's Mt Everest and he was so happy to release a live album. All the promotion and booking were done for free because Geffen believed so much in Dylan. The other highlight was about how Geffen knew Guns N' Roses was on the verge of exploding.
Surprisingly the documentary is very up-to-date with Barack Obama near the end of the documentary. I didn't really think this was really necessary to telling David Geffen's story. If anything, I would've liked to have seen more of Geffen's misses (Nelsons, anyone?), along with his hits.
I learned quite a lot about David Geffen, and if you love his records and want to know more about how he got there, check out "American Masters Inventing David Geffen" next Tuesday, November 20th on PBS.
|
American Masters Inventing David Geffen |
IN OTHER PBS NEWS:
| aaronneville.com Multiple Grammy Award-winning artist Aaron Neville will be performing a special concert on Wednesday, November 28th, in Brooklyn. A limited number of tickets are still available. The concert will be filmed by PBS for broadcast as "Aaron Neville: My True Story" in March 2013! If you are a true fan and want to possibly appear in the background, you definitely will want to attend his upcoming show. As I have previously mentioned, his new record, My True Storywill feature doo-wop music. You can grab "Ting a Ling" as a free download on his official website. | thebeatles.com "Magical Mystery Tour Revisited" will be airing on PBS, via THIRTEEN'S Great Performances, on December 14th at 10pm. I actually have not seen the original "Magical Mystery Tour", but I'm sure I've seen snippets of it on television. From my understanding, the "Magical Mystery Tour" and "Magical Mystery Tour Revisited" will be airing back-to-back on December 14. The latter will feature interviews with the remaining Beatles (Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, George Harrison- before his death), plus Peter Fonda, Paul Gambaccini, Terry Gilliam, Neil Innes, Paul Merton, Barry Miles, Annie Nightingale and Martin Scorsese. Again, The Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour" will be airing on THIRTEEN's Great Performances on December 14. More details on pbs.org. |
)